TOOLS MAKYTH MAN—OAKLEY 437 
there is no doubt about the chert chopping tool of Early Soan type 
found at Locality 18, Choukoutien (China), in association with fauna 
indicating a stratigraphic horizon within the period of the Second or 
Mindel Glaciation. The slightly later flake-and-chopper-tool industry 
associated with Peking man at Locality 1, Choukoutien, is now gen- 
erally regarded as dating from the beginning of the Second Inter- 
glacial period. Some authors still claim that it is older, either inter- 
Mindel or even Giinz-Mindel, but the associated fauna is clearly Middle 
Pleistocene in the modern sense. 
In Africa, particularly south of the Sahara, high-level river gravels 
of Lower Pleistocene age have been found to contain large numbers 
of chipped pebbles, mainly of quartzite, which have been widely ac- 
cepted as artifacts. These so-called pebble tools were first recognized 
in Uganda by the geologist E. J. Wayland in 1920, who referred them 
to a pre-Paleolithic stage of culture, later named Kafuan on the basis 
of their typical occurrence on the 175-foot terrace of the Kafu River. 
In a recent monograph on the prehistory of Uganda, the late Pro- 
fessor van Riet Lowe described no less than 27 constantly recurring 
forms of “Kafuan-type split and trimmed pebbles,” and claimed that 
he and Wayland could trace the evolution of rostrocarinates from 
the simple split pebble, thus providing a link with the discoveries in 
East Anglia, where Moir found a gradation from rostrocarinates to 
Chellean (Abbevillian) hand axes. Kafuan-type pebbles are even 
found in a layer of lateritic ironstone at the base of the 270-foot Kagera 
terrace which may be Lower Villafranchian or Pliocene. If there 
were no question about their being artifacts, these chipped pebbles 
would be the oldest evidence of a toolmaking hominid and would 
support the idea of an almost infinitely slow evolution of the earliest 
culture over some half a million years, from the end of the Pliocene 
to the first hand axes. 
As doubts grew about the artificiality of chipped flints in the 
Tertiary and Villafranchian formations of Europe, belief waxed 
strongly in favor of the African pebble tools, because these were not 
in flint (which breaks so easily under a variety of forces), but in 
quartzite and the like. Moreover, they were for the most part in 
situations far removed from Pleistocene glaciers and pounding sea 
waves which have produced such quantities of pseudoartifacts in 
Europe. 
Some prehistorians are now beginning to feel that the Kafuan peb- 
bles ° have been accepted as artifacts without sufficient consideration 
being given to the possibility that these also were fractured by nat- 
ural forces. Should not quartzite gravels of, say, Triassic age be 
searched for similar forms, to see if they are produced in circum- 
® Excluding the “advanced Kafuan’’ of some authors, which is synonymous with the 
unquestionably human Tarly Oldowan. 
